Presenter: Mrs. Larson, Elementary Art Teacher

Today, Mrs. Larson, an elementary school art teacher, came by to talk to my class about her experiences as a teacher, as well as some important points regarding what and how she teaches now. She mentioned that she is not only an art teacher, but a teacher of children in areas of social and life skills, organizational skills, cultural awareness, cross disciplines, and creativity and problem solving. On a logical basis, I know that a teacher is one who has the opportunity to teach children such skills, but to really commit it to practice in the classroom is not an easy task. But it is something I want to be able to establish and do successfully.

Mrs. Larson also talked about what success looks like in art, and how it should be established: having a responsive classroom is important, which includes the necessity of developing a philosophy on how you run your classroom, and how you teach this philosophy to your students before moving on to the subject matter. The best way to create a responsive classroom is through guided discovery, which means that the teacher helps students teak steps to review what they know about a material or medium, and then take it a step further by showing the student how to use it/them properly.

Mrs. Larson talked about a few important concepts that I have heard about, but not necessarily known too much about, including Positive Behavior Intervention Supports (PBIS) and Student Learning Objectives (SLOs). She explained how PBIS is set up in the elementary school at which she teaches, and how she celebrates good behavior and helps to change bad behavior by reteaching students what good behavior looks like, and the benefits of behaving well. I also came to understand more about what is expected when creating SLOs, and how to effectively develop lessons to reach the goals set, as well as how to measure the progress made.

It was great to hear about Mrs. Larson's experiences as an elementary art teacher and everything she has had to figure out along the way. I found it especially helpful because I would love to teach elementary art one day. I also appreciated how she shared her curriculum map and documents with the class! It is always nice to get different resources from different teachers so that I can utilize what they have been using into my own instruction and tweak it to fit more of my style of teaching as well as tailor it to meet the needs of my students.